F2P Failure and Elite Dangerous

They should have developed the game for 6 months before the kickstarter and actually brought the neccessary proof of concept and eye candy to the table. Once concluded they should have then genuinely monetized the Alpha instead of continuing to offer the kickstarter rewards for a year at ludicrous prices. This would have ensured a far more consistent exposure, a more balanced community, generated better momentum in the media and among the various essential external communities (Steam et al) and ensured a consistent injection of cash.

But why? Is there not enough "fire and forget" early access alphas around? Also ED was in slow development for 6 year before Kickstarter. ED had actual goods to show during KS, with multiplayer combat which is now delivered to alpha testers - but not only that. In nutshell KS wasn't stellar success, but it wasn't failure you describe either, for community it worked beautifully. Also I see you are not in alpha - otherwise you would agree that wide alpha (as FD understands this name) is not nor practical, nor managable. I would like to point out that people already complain that FD cashes in on alpha, so there's clear contradiction here.

Instead they went Old School: which is a deprecated method of doing business in this industry. They closed ranks, limited information despite rapacious demand for updates and eye candy, encouraged a cliquey community based on a minority of middle aged fan boys with deep pockets and actively encouraged social division via a fragmented user base. The poorer majority of whom are simply excluded from various aspects because they haven't dropped a ton on vapourware in blind faith.

First, updates were a lot and very interesting. Space stations, traveling, ship design, sound design. cockpit....and so on and so forth. Everyone could watch Youtube videos and subscribe to newsletters by the way (even without becoming backer). Limited information? SC shows only ships at this point, and almost no footage of DFM. I wonder why.

Second, while DDF was place where majority of discussion happened, everyone interested enough could participate. Despite some arguing against DDF archive was created and lot of people outside DDF chimed in on lot of topics, and their input were valued quite a bit. For example, during in-system traveling discussion Mike Evans questioned lot of people outside DDF for reasons requiring now what we know as supercruise.

"Blind faith"? Social division? Do I really taste soar grapes here?

Also I will disagree with flooding people with information. There's such thing as over-saturation, and giving wrong first impression. People around net already talking that ED is just another space combat shooter.

Media exposure has been amateur hour bizarre: broadsheets? Some magazine nobody reads, because nobody reads magazines anymore? We're over a year in and we've just got a community manager for the forum. Who's first act was to run a competition that only a few hundred people can compete in? Again with the social apartheid. This forum has around 200 people actively engaged with it. From a KS pool of 40, 000. From a required potential customer base of over a million. Why a million? Because thats the minimum number of copies you have to sell in the first 12 months to keep the doors open. Where are these people? What do they engage with? How do we reach them and draw them in? Pro-tip: Offering £100+ Alpha access is not it.

And this is because ED is still in development, and no active sales are planned till Q4? Again, in my opinion, FD clearly plans to push for more PR efforts when normal beta closes in. Reasons for this are obvious - for example, at this point people see this is nice game, but ohh, alpha is costly, so no interest. Also to be honest, no way I would show alpha to common crowd at this point. It is just too buggy and messy and stuff gets fixed as we discuss here.

They rather worryingly don't seem to be listening to key feedback. You can almost imagine how the reviews will go: inevitible collapse of self maintained distribution servers on release day, dated graphics, don't like the flight model, controls with kb and mouse are tedious, combat is shallow, groups promote isolationism, sandbox is only for pve no true multiplayer ie this is not a social experience, gameplay is repetitive and much hyped procedural content offers only infinite boredom etc. Bottom line: if you like that sort of thing you'll want to buy this game I guess. 70%. Meta critic flop.

FD don't listen to feedback? In what kind of universe you live in? Of course they don't support any suggestion thrown around here, however they are very welcoming to constructive feedback, which has been resulted in much better game than any of us expected. Traveling? Check. Recent buzz with radar? They will look into it. Stuff floating around? also there will be slider. Seriously, what's wrong with you?

If they do fail they will have only themselves to blame. If you are in business to make money you don't do things like Frontier have. And ultimately the 'we are making our game' mantra is only an excuse for not maximizing revenue and buzz and a smoke screen for poor vision and leadership.

So far I have hard time to see how they will fail in long term. They have solid tech, solid backing from people from community, and they learn from their mistakes. And yeah, they are making their own game. I would say it has worked pretty well so far.
 
Not sure if you didn't mean to post this in the other thread about progress info :p

They should have developed the game for 6 months before the kickstarter

I'm not sure if it works that way. You can't just develop for 6 months and then stop and see how it goes. There are people behind these games. SC started out with the same development model, but they created buzz and FD didn't. So it's not that.

Instead they went Old School: which is a deprecated method of doing business in this industry. They closed ranks, limited information despite rapacious demand for updates and eye candy, encouraged a cliquey community

Generally I think the FD team is very good at making the game, and bad at marketing it. It's not only silly mistakes like you mentioned, lack of eye candy (ships!!!) or elitism in the community. They just have a better marketing team, but it's not simple to find good people. Imagine trying to hire very expensive people who specialize in selling crap. You'll never know what they are good at selling...

Some parts are down to CR games being younger and more known. The name is a mistake, Elite Dangerous tells you nothing in the best case, while Star Citizen describes an MMO in space. The ED website is a shame, zero info, no bling. The sale structure of SC was hugely more successful (Selling ships!).

And ultimately CR just promises gamers whatever they want. Epic story in space? Check. Mocap and linear storytelling in cutscenes? Check. Landings on planets? Check. Well you can land on specific spots in limited levels. Blarg practically a cutscene. I almost dare not mention clans? "It's not a priority, our community has assured us!". Meanwhile over at SC... derpy McDerp belches out video for the fan community weekly.
But it's simply far harder to tell people what makes Elite great. Generated missions? Hmm. Text only NPC dialogue? Hmm. It's better because it can be based on a simulation and a story generator. But it's a very tough sell!
 
Some F2p games go viral, such as Flappy Bird, others not quite so.

I did not see mention of Zoo Tycoon, unless I miss it.

That is sold by Microsoft, and FD got their money for that, and deal is over. They don't have to care about ZT sales.

It is 70k units at this point btw.
 
also there will be slider. Seriously, what's wrong with you?

Can I has guild chat nao? You listen? Game is fixed!??! We no care about features for sniveling kids over at SC! Is our game! SC can has XMPP chat you can connect facebook Adium ichat to chat with guild. Good no cookie for us!
 
Can I has guild chat nao? You listen? Game is fixed!??! We no care about features for sniveling kids over at SC! Is our game! SC can has XMPP chat you can connect facebook Adium ichat to chat with guild. Good no cookie for us!

XMPP integration would be nice, but I would rather see it as third party addon, not by default in the game.
 
That is sold by Microsoft, and FD got their money for that, and deal is over. They don't have to care about ZT sales.

how can you be sure there are no associated royalties or contract penalties. The latest results had £291k of royalty income and hints at some kind of contract penalty.

Albeit I don't know what game they are associated with.
 
Mandatory subscriptions would simply kill the game (Elder Scrolls Online is making a huge mistake). That era is over; World of Warcraft is the legacy of that age, not the model for the present. Voluntary subscriptions for those who want to put extra support into the game are fine, but don't think that they would ever let that impinge upon the cash shop- it doesn't in Star Citizen, it just gets you some news and developer access perks.

Guild Wars and, in particular, Guild Wars 2 have nailed the market here- you buy the box, you have no subscription fees, you have cash shop items which a. can be earned in-game if you work enough at it and b. never give any mechanical advantage. Demand for cosmetics is high. GW2 is turning out vast amounts of funded content without any subscription fees at all, and no-one is buying anything that makes them 'better' than others. Chris Roberts directly name-checked the GW2 model when proposing Star Citizen. ED going in the same way is smart- the only addition being content expansions, which are fine so long as they do not split the player base.
 
how can you be sure there are no associated royalties or contract penalties. The latest results had £291k of royalty income and hints at some kind of contract penalty.

Albeit I don't know what game they are associated with.

Yeah, I can't be sure, so it was just my wild guess. Still, they don't give details on this one.
 
Before we start to worry notice ar the end of the article, that even with this news "shares in Frontier Development were trading up 3.5% at 171.75 pence".

True they need ED to be a sucess and sell a significant number of copies but this will be helped by also transferring it toplay on consoles, something they have a lot of experience with and will manage a long time before SC.
 
Before we start to worry notice ar the end of the article, that even with this news "shares in Frontier Development were trading up 3.5% at 171.75 pence".

True they need ED to be a sucess and sell a significant number of copies but this will be helped by also transferring it toplay on consoles, something they have a lot of experience with and will manage a long time before SC.

FDEV currently +23,74% for the month, yesterday alone 20%...the figure of 3,5% was v. early in the day
 
Why would anyone subscribe? What would subscribers get that the rest of us wouldn't?

Well first things first, FDev would have to think about whether they wish to offer some sort of subs model ALONGSIDE (no one, no one is talking about Mandatory subs here) MicrotTransactions. Then they could start to bulk it up.

There are a few reasons why people would subscribe

1) Compared to MicroTransactions, Subscription models offers fixed costs and simplicity
2) FDev are making a commitment to ongoing and regular updates of this game. It takes staff to support and develop the game, and look after the community. I don't mind contributing to that ongoing cost, but see point 1.
3) Perks could be nice, balanced and fair similar to SC for example or even some in-game stuff. Kickstarters were rewarded for their early commitment, why not reward people for ongoing commitment.

I have put in £100 to get this game, is that not enough to get the complete game?

Yes, no one is saying that you have to subscribe. it's an option. Not so many people seem to appreciate that you could have MORE THAN ONE WAY TO PAY.

But also, your £100 will get you in to the game, and then you will have Microtransactions to contend with. Fdev want to have a steady income stream from E: D to make some profit and to push back in to the game. MT is a redline for me. I'd be happy to walk away from E: D if they screw up the game with their presentation of MicroTransactions.
 
Having dropped £100 in upfront costs on this game alone, I have no intention of either micro transactions, or a subscription fee...

The former because it's easy to nickle and dime yourself to death through an easy temptation...

The 2nd because I have already paid for the game upfront, and see no reason to keep paying for the game after I already purchased a licence to use it afterward.

This is why I don't play games such as WoW or the now defunct CoH/CoV. It's also the reason why I never invest money in productivity software that charges you an annual subscription.

Want an ongoing revenue stream? Cosmetic items that don't affect gameplay are fine. Otherwise, just keep selling the base game and its expansions. I want my game to continue working even after I have finished putting money into it... not to suddenly stop working due to non payment of a subscription.
 
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I wouldn't count GW2 a failure, F2P is the only way, if you do it right.

I wouldn't mind them selling special weapon or ship skins ingame to up their earnings.
 
Some F2p games go viral, such as Flappy Bird, others not quite so.
I'm amazed that games like that are downloaded by so many people. I watched someone on YouTube play it for a bit. I would be done with it in 5 minutes and yet someone has made a 3D version of it for Minecraft!

I shouldn't be surprised. After all there is a game where you have to throw scrunched up paper into a bin. :rolleyes:
 
I know it's not F2P, but they will need to secure an ongoing revenue stream (to pay for servers and infrastructure) so they'll need to monetise it in similar ways.
I don't think so. Most multiplayer games don't do this unless they are F2P or have a typical MMO server setup.
 
Re: subscriptions:

Ask SW:ToR how those turned out. Or Warhammer Online. Or, heck, wait and see how it'll turn out for ESO.
Now consider that elite has way less of an immediate multiplayer aspect, and you have *THE* recipe for instant disaster... And you're claiming that f2p would be bad? HA.
 
I had an invite for the ESO stress test weekend. Didn't even bother in the end. I've heard, and seen via YT, that it's just another hot-key MMO with very little innovation to distinguish itself from the rest. Other than the Elder Scrolls universe, which I love to bits, I don't feel any great need to play. Perhaps after it goes live and the reviews start coming in I will take another look.
 
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